for 9th of May - 10th of May: user experiment 2740 , first users with DIPOLE100-X long pulse laser

Took beam at 18 keV with roughly 450 muJ

M1 and M2 Mirrors on Pt stripe, M3 on B4C and with Tx = 4

Aligned X-ray beam to end of the experimental hutch and optimised 3 different focus settings at shock TCC in IC2 i.e. 10, 25 and 50 mum which correspond to the three different phase plate settings of DIPOLE

Intermediate focussing scheme with CRL1 was chosen, focussing to TCC in IC2 with CRL3

VISAR laser and DIPOLE laser were aligned to TCC and VISAR laser was timed to the X-rays

Alignment of new white light interferometer for sample alignment was done

Calibration runs were taken for XRD, VISAR and X-ray only on samples was done

issues:

VAREX XRD detector shows a stripe: as it is far out in 2theta, this seems tolerable. The problem has been understood to originate from the frame grabber. We have a replacement card and it can be exchanged if users want to change this. At the moment the idea is to get the set-up ready first.

Questar1 camera in IC1 was broken last week during Relax shocks, the X-ray reference point in IC1 currently cannot be seen with this monitor as it is hidden by a damage: new camera is ready for replacement

Diverter for DIPOLE was not functioning during a major part of the night and this prevented DIPOLE shots to be taken after all the set-up was accomplished: was fixed by DIPOLE experts wwho came in for the day shift

XFEL pointing at the instrument is rather large - in the afternoon the beam size during horizontal beam size measurements were a factor of 2 larger than the vertical ones: problem under investigation currently (10 am of 10th of May)